Here at People’s Voice Media we work across a range of projects in the UK and across Europe, from small-scale one-off local events to multi-year international programmes… and everything else in-between. We will soon be launching an exciting heritage project in the North of England called HOME? that has been made possible by the Heritage Fund.

The project will focus on the collection, curation and dissemination of lived experiences of people from migrant communities living in Northern England over the last 10 years. Specifically, it will look at contemporary socio-cultural experiences of migrant communities, focusing on how these communities have settled in (or not) to their new homes.

To help us deliver this project, we are recruiting a Project Worker. They will be responsible for the day-to-day coordination and delivery of the HOME? heritage project.

How to apply

To apply for this role, you should:

1. Download and read through the job description
2. Email a statement of why you are interested in working with us and how your skills and expertise match the job role (specifically the key qualities and responsibilities) and our values. This can be either a document (2 pages of A4 max), an audio recording (5 minutes max.) or a video recording (5 minutes max). This should be sent to Hayley on hayley@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk by end of 27th March 2022.
3. In your email, please also include where you are based. We are a remote working organisation but we deliver our activities largely in-person, we also hold team working days monthly in the North West of England. This specific role is focused on delivery in the North of England and so a willingness to commute to those locations is a must. (Travel expenses are in addition to the salary).

What happens next?

We will review the applications by 1st April 2022 and select which applications we will be inviting for an informal interview. We inform all applicants of our decisions. We are not in a position to give individual feedback at this stage.

Interviews will be held online on 11th April 2022 between 1pm and 5pm. We will inform all interviewees of our decisions by the 13th April 2022. We would hope that the successful applicant can start on the 1st May 2022, or as close to this as possible. We will provide feedback to all interviewees.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Last year, People’s Voice Media teamed up with Genio and a team of experts within the social innovation arena to produce ‘Learning As You Scale’. This guide supports people and organisations involved in scaling social innovations to develop and embed a disposition to learn ‘as they scale’. We are now excited to be able to share this toolkit with you.

Social innovations aim to design and deliver solutions to social problems and seek to improve people’s lives and communities. They come in different shapes and sizes, including processes and practices, products and services. Such innovations usually start life as ‘pilots’ that are delivered outside of the wider system, market or environment already working to address a given socialproblem. Successful pilot innovations may then seek to ‘scale’ or ‘spread’ within or beyond their sectors, dependent on their initial results.

Learning As You Scale is not about the traditional formal post facto evaluation, rather it is about learning during a change process, system redesign or roll-out. This guide prompts social innovators to embark on the initial learning process in respect of one social innovation – and we hope that this will lead to a learning habit, becoming an essential part of the culture of an organisation or partnership leading multiple social innovations. Rooted in action research, this practical guide enables individuals and organisations working on social innovations to explore how they gather data and insights from their innovations, how they evaluate and assess these materials and how they can use these insights both within scaling plans and beyond.

Learning As You Scale focuses on supporting people working on social innovations which are scaling in complex change environments and are often addressing ‘wicked’ problems within the social sphere. This guide has been designed specifically for those involved in social innovations who are interested in involving the people for whom the innovation is designed to support within this scaling and learning process. It can be used by individuals and teams within these types of social innovations who occupy roles connected to evaluation, learning & development, and leadership, governance & strategy.

You can now download the full guide here: Learning As You Scale – Full Guide

Or download some key bitesized sections below:

1. Scaling a social innovation? Measure your impact with… the PICO framework (Dr. Gorgi Krlev)
2. Scaling a social innovation? Measure your impact with… Process Tracing (Dr. Gorgi Krlev)
3. Scaling a social innovation? Measure your impact with… Lived Experience Storytelling (Dr. Hayley Trowbridge)
4. Scaling a social innovation? Share your learning (Stephen Barnett)

Earlier this month a 2-Day training programme took place in Manchester as part of the ‘Not Another Co-Production Project’. Covering the fundamentals of Community Reporting and exploring how this method can be used as a tool for co-production the event was delivered in person at the St. Thomas Centre in Ardwick.

This is a 3-year project funded by the National Lottery that will see People’s Voice Media and Ideas Alliance work together to move co-production from a buzz word into an embedded practice across different areas in England. We want a future where policy, research and service design are informed by local people and where collaboration is the heart of how things are done. This way of working is messy, fun, challenging, but can really make a difference to those who are willing to give the time and energy to it.

The training was a mixture of presentations, individual/small group/whole group activities and discussions, reflection tasks, practical recording activities and Q&A.

As part of the day, we shared our own experiences of co-pro and here’s some of what chatted about:

• Co-production can lead to new ways of thinking and new ways of doing thing – different people’s perspectives ask us to think differently
• In larger organisations and institutions it can be hard to do things in the way you’d like to do them if you don’t have the authority to make certain decisions – sometimes the people who are advocating and practicing co-production struggle to get their bosses to see its value and share or handover their decision-making powers 
• A big part of co-production, is reflecting and critiquing – who has control, who have the power, who is setting the agenda?

Over the last few months People’s Voice Media and the Community Reporter Network have teamed up with the NHS in Greater Manchester, to gather people’s recent experiences of GP services.

We’ve gathered these stories to explore what GP services are like for people who are accessing them, looking at what is working well and what could be better. With the NHS in Greater Manchester we want to use the stories to open up a conversation across Greater Manchester about GP Services.

We have gathered 65+ experiences from residents in Manchester, Wigan, Salford, Tameside, Bolton, Rochdale, Oldham, Bury, Stockport and Trafford about how they’ve found accessing GP services during the pandemic. People have shared with us the changes they’ve experiences – such as telephone appointments or online consultations – and their perspectives on them.

For some people, the changes haven’t been so positive. For this resident, not being able to speak in-person to their GP has meant that they don’t feel they can express properly what they are feeling and they don’t feel they’ve got the healthcare that they needed. However, other people like this resident explains how new options around how to book appointments and get repeat prescriptions are real positive developments.

You can listen to all of the stories we’ve gathered here: https://communityreporter.net/experiences-gp-services and we will keep you up-to-date with any developments with these great pieces of insight. Watch this space!

Since September People’s Voice Media have been working on a project with volunteers and community members from across Manchester. In February an online evaluation session took place in which people fed back their experiences working on the project.

The project has been delivered in collaboration with Manchester Local Care Organisation and a variety of VCSE organisations from across the city. Local health development coordinators from MLCO have helped support representatives from the VCSE organisations both in and out of the training sessions. Last week HDCs and team members from MLCO came together to provide feedback on their experiences of the project, reflecting on the aims of the project. Below are the key themes and questions that emerged in the evaluation session:

To utilise the knowledge & expertise of VCSE organisations working in Manchester neighborhoods

• The people involved in the project reflected the communities that need more representation
• The range of VCSE orgs involved in the project meant a diverse range of stories emerged
• The trainings provided opportunities to build connections between Manchester VCSE’s

To train staff & volunteers as Community Reporters

• Trust & confidence levels were impacted by the amount of organisations and representatives in the training sessions
• The practical aspects of the training helped to solidify people’s learning
• People would benefit from learning how Community Reporting could be used in different contexts outside of the project

To build relationships & develop trust between communities & healthcare professionals

• The trainings offered a chance to build relationships between VCSE organisations
• The payment offered for taking part in the project strengthened links between MLCO and community organisations as people feel their contributions are valued
• Difficult to measure cause and effect in terms of developing relationships and building trust in this context

To gather, curate & share stories of people’s experiences during the pandemic to bring about positive change in local communities

• A series of films have been produced as a result of the project including voices from various communities within Manchester reflecting on their experiences of the pandemic
• Confidence levels increased in some of the people who took part in the Community Reporter training sessions
• Future potential for discussions around the content that has been created

Develop trust in public health messaging (Questions raised by MLCO)

• How could we use lived experience stories in health messaging?
• How can we adjust health messaging to reflect the complexities of people’s lives?
• How do we understand from a community perspective what matters?

The evaluation session marked the end of the project and was a great opportunity to regroup and reflect on people’s experiences. We hope the people involved in the project continue to use Community Reporting in their work in the future, and look forward to seeing how the stories gathered continue to generate conversation around the impact of the pandemic on Manchester’s communities.